She stood at the edge of the cliff, her eyes glaring madly at the ocean. Its waves crashed against the cliff walls in harsh discordance against the cries of the seagulls, as if the sea had grown fingers and was trying to grab and tear at the sharp outcroppings of rock and weeds. She heard music in the distance, bright chords of calmness and content joy, it felt so sterile. It felt so fake, so shallow, like a mechanical bird sitting on a metal tree branch singing like clockwork, the key in its back slowly winding down. The sea was cruel but it was honest, it had such life in the pulsating nonsensical rhythms of the crashing waves. It would drown her and drag her to the bottom where merciless waves would toss her body like a rag doll until she washed dead upon some distant shore, or was eaten by the sharks. She thought grimly of them ripping her frail body to pieces; her blood would seeping quickly into the water, as if her lifeblood longed to leave her dead body and find new life. She turned around, looking for the source of the music but unable to find it. But it rang against the emotions that swirled in a confusing miasma in her head. Why did she always feel such feelings? She wanted to turn her head from the sea and cry, to rush into the arms of the one creature in the universe that would not waste her tears and her gasps as she cried breathlessly. But she was gone to her forever, she could find solace no longer. Would her tears be fertile and grow beautiful flowers or burn the grass away with each acid drop? Kneeling down in the grass she wiped her tears with her sleeve as her whole body trembled, and then she could not support her weight, she could not breathe, so she knelt, her hands holding her up in the cold dirt and grass. More gasps convulsed her body, more hot tears burned down her cheeks and neck, still her lungs could not fill with air.

As she walked down the dirt path back to her village, her cheeks still felt hot, and she wondered if they burned with the same raw red that she felt. It was early evening, for though she had lost track of time while on the cliffs she could see the telltale smoke of cooking fires rising and twisting slowly towards the sky from the huts. The smell of cooking fish filled her nostrils as she drew nearer to the middle hut. It was the middle of the month, and by the angle at which the light shone on the moon in the early evening sky she knew that it was time for her reckoning. When she was younger she had dreaded entering the healer’s tent to give account of all of her dreams. Sometimes terrible and frightening, filled with dark ominous shapes and whispered words of a strange language that echoed in her mind for days after, sometimes of bright lands like the Summerland that she had heard of in legend, that left her mind longing and detached from this mundane reality, she always dreaded to recount them, because in doing so she left her mind open to them once again and they ravaged her soul, leaving her defenseless against strong emotions that bent her to their will like petty gods fighting for her soul. The old man would always make some mysterious meaning of them that she could not understand, and she would become frustrated that she could not fathom them. But now that she was older, she felt that she was beginning to understand more of what they meant, and now did she not mind seeing the healer as much.

He was waiting for her, sitting on a white sun bleached log outside of his hut. His eyes were grey, she wondered if they had once had colour that had since been drained from them. His hair was grey as well, though he was not losing any of it, yet. He traced a stick in the dirt back and forth, drawing in the dirt a symbol that she had been taught as a child. A Circle within a circle, and a three-dimensional triangle within the second triangle, all surrounded by lines flowing outwards. It was supposed to represent the three physical dimensions, time, and the outer circle were to represent what lay beyond the obvious universe, while the lines represented dimensions beyond space and time, which were the dimensions that the healers were most concerned with. They believed that all physical laws were derived not from the physical dimensions but from the external ones that could not be seen, and that all that happened in the three physical dimensions were merely a result of what occurred in the outer ones. She wondered what he was thinking, but knew that she would never find out. He was quiet and humble, often not speaking unless bidden to do so, and even then giving answers unsatisfactory to those asking. He liked to give people just enough information to be able to find the answers to their questions without telling them the answers outright.